Monique Roffey: 'I wanted what my parents had'

Growing up in Trinidad, Monique Roffey liked being the child of a dashing alpha couple. They gave her a prototype of what a marriage could be: strong, happy, equal. Without conscious thought, she set out to replicate that remarkable union

Years ago, when I was 25 or so, I asked my father: "Why did you marry Mum?" We were standing on the porch of our home in Trinidad. He was in his late 50s then. The question caught him off-guard; he was a man who never liked to talk about feelings, his or anyone else's. He stared off into the mid-distance, his back to me, and then he turned and said, casually: "Because she was a dish."

That was the wrong answer. What was I expecting? Something perceptive about my mother's human qualities, their love affair, how he'd "seen" her? Yes. I felt let down by this uncomplicated answer: it vexed my feminist heart and confirmed my fears about men's interest in and value of women. Now, I can see that his answer made perfect sense: alpha males choose to marry alpha females. Men like my father choose to marry beautiful women, and all the adventure this brings with it. I have always seen my parents' long marriage as many things, adventure-full being top of the list.

All my life, I've had a certain fascination for how they loved and lived. Their marriage has been the constant backdrop to my adult relationships – would I ever find a love that could live up to my parents' remarkable union?

My mother's background is partly northern Mediterranean, partly Levantine. She was born in Egypt in the 30s; her parents were a mixture of French, Italian, Maltese and Lebanese. Her first language was French, but she also spoke Italian and Arabic from birth. Mum remembers a tolerant and civilised society, where every type of Arab, Jew and Christian knew and understood one another's ways and rules, and even spoke a little of one another's languages. Mum's family were staunch Roman Catholic, and ruled by a matriarch – Nona, my great-grandmother, who only wore black and once clubbed my grandfather, Clement, over the head, breaking an umbrella, and who'd embroidered, with gold thread, a trousseau for a daughter of King Fouad.

My parents met in Port Said, Egypt, in 1951. My father, a young lieutenant for the Royal Engineers, had been posted to the Suez canal. Mum worked for the British army as his bilingual secretary. He tried wooing her, in a roundabout British way, but had too much competition. When he left, they wrote to each other for four years, my mum sending him coquettish snaps of herself, nursing his interest. Eventually, he had more luck courting her on the page ("your father wrote wonderful letters"); she wrote, encouraging him to visit. Dad flew out. He proposed to Mum on a bus in Port Said. There was a quickie wedding in a register office, but this didn't count in my mother's family's Catholic eyes. They spent a week living apart until the more formal church wedding in Port Said. They took the boat back to Portsmouth by way of a honeymoon.

Dad? The quintessential Englishmen: alert, clever, brought up on cool reserve, lawn tennis and bowls. He was train mad, and played golf and bridge. But he rejected Harrow-on-the Hill, being chained to a daily commute, a City job. When offered a chance to work in a tiny far-off island called Trinidad, he jumped at the chance, and talked Mum round.

In January of 1956, Mum and Dad arrived in Port of Spain with two suitcases and a green bicycle. Trinidad was on the brink of change. The month they arrived, a charismatic leader, Eric Williams, was launching a new political party and mapping a new way forward for the soon to be post-colonial era in the British Caribbean. It was an exciting time to be there, and while Dad worked, Mum discovered Trinidad on her green bicycle.

I was born nine years later, in 1965. I was an observant but dreamy child. I had a lazy eye, and wild curls. I was inward, prone to reading books, staring at walls, writing on walls, also ludicrously precocious, fighting and cursing and karate-chopping boys. Born on an island, I could swim before I could walk, thrown many times into swimming pools and warm transparent Caribbean waters: sink or swim, that was my first lesson. While I'm not a natural athlete, I'm still a strong swimmer, and feel a great affinity with the sea. I grew up around water, beaches, the sea, boats and fishing.

Also, I grew up around a grand love affair; this well-matched couple – my parents. From childhood, I was spellbound by them, star struck. They looked like people who were famous – Hollywood famous. They exuded confidence and sex appeal: Mum was curvaceous and vivacious, easily as glamorous and sexy as a young Elizabeth Taylor. What I always knew about my parents was that they were in love, and this love had a fizz. It was exciting to be their child, to be around them. There was a dynamism between them, a charge. This was Eros, a sexual love. At parties they danced flamboyantly together; when arguing, Mum could get dramatic – once she slapped Dad in public, another time she threw a drink in his face (still, perhaps the most exciting thing I've ever witnessed). They hosted great parties, many of which are still the best I've been to; they liked dressing up. Mum and Dad's New Year parties became infamous in Trinidad. Recently, I asked my older brother: "What do you think Mum and Dad taught us?" The answer came quickly: "How to throw a damn good party."

I liked being the child of this alpha-couple. I grew up gazing at the photographs of them together, listening to my mother's stories of Egypt and then Trinidad, of her green bicycle, of Trinidad in the 60s, all the while photographing them in the camera lens of my eye. They gave me a model, a prototype of what a marriage could be: strong, happy, equal. There was a more stable love between them too, a friendship love. They talked to each other – conversation and argument were always in the air; we played board games and card games in our family – poker, blackjack, bridge, Monopoly. As well as being a sexy duo, my parents drank tea and played Scrabble together every day. Mum learned how to play bridge, and became a good golfer; she had a competitive spirit and wanted to match my father as much as possible. While Mum left school at 16, she was a born conversationalist and raconteur, which made up for any lack of a university degree.

But this is the romance-only picture of my parents; as I grow older myself, I've gained a more realistic view of their long marriage. There was trouble and darkness between them too: they lost a baby two weeks after it was born; their marriage was often threatened by other people's sexual interest in them; and they had their fair share of financial ups and downs. Dad lost his way a bit, became impatient and disconnected from the world beyond the island. They grew old and leathered in the Caribbean sun. Like everyone else in Trinidad, they drank a lot of rum. They were tested and stretched in many ways; but, despite this, they were married for just under 40 years: up to the end they were still alive to each other, arguing, playing Scrabble and full of chatter.

At the age of 62, my father died of cancer – it was much too soon. My mother never remarried or got over it, never even thought of another man. Like curly hair and asthma, widowhood also runs in my family. The stern Nona and my serene and gracious grandmother Maman were widows too; both were women who married for love and lost their husbands through death – and mourned these men long after they were gone. Romantic love, successful marriage and a long period of mourning have been the pattern of three generations of women in my family. Recently, I added up the years of widowhood in the lives of these three women, and it came to 126 years.

I didn't realise this pattern was in my family DNA until my own relationship broke down, and I mourned for a long time. I didn't know that I'd inherited this tendency to grieve deeply. Like my father, my partner had been a charismatic and bookish man. I'd set out, without much conscious thought, to replicate the model my parents had given me: my ex and I were a strong double-act too. Around me, many of my close friends have also failed to go the whole way; we all came unstuck, some of us with children. Indeed, last night I sat around a table with friends, men and women, all of us the children of long marriages, all of us knowing this model. Times and people have changed and new models for human relationships are emerging, and yet, we all agreed how much we admired our parents, and how hard it is now to aspire to how they lived.

It was only after the death of my relationship that I began to see and know my mother and her grief, the loss of my father, her loneliness. I lived in Trinidad for half of 2006, writing a novel, talking to my mother, playing Scrabble, and drinking tea with her most days. Forty years is a very long time. Mum is 80 now, and she has spent most of her life with my father or grieving him. When I think of her long and eventful marriage, it's with awe and respect – but more than anything I now understand what it is like for a partnership to stop, when still there is so much to talk about.